Posted on 03/10/2010 7:20:06 AM PST by george76
California is doomed for two simple but profound reasons: the cost structure is too high for most businesses to survive, and a boom-dependent economy.
The dysfunctions crippling California would easily fill a volume: a dysfunctional Legislature that has been gerrymandered to protect virtually every seat; a dysfunctional proposition system which enables special interests to craft Protected Fiefdoms via the ballot box; recalcitrant public unions who don't see anything wrong with public servants getting 90% of top-pay in pensions while still earning big bucks as "contract employees," an enormous population of undocumented workers who pay only sales taxes, and whose employers pay no payroll taxes, either-- and that just scratches the surface.
a crushingly high costs structure and an economy entirely dependent on the next boom.
California is now the world capital of Denial.
Everyone from the State legislature to union officials to realtors to small business owners are hanging on, refusing to face the fact that there will be no boom to save them and the state, To survive one more year, they're borrowing money, hiding debts and real valuations, monkeying with the books and playing accounting tricks, borrowing from next year's revenues...
California is doomed to insolvency at every level, public and private.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Scott is correct. California is not Iowa. We are producers, and despite the idiots that are running the state we have many things that most states don’t. That is the ability for the people to make their own law through proposition. It gets bad enough we will pass some pretty extreme law that will right the ship. We are the 7 largest economy in the world. It is not likely california becomes a ghost town.
Yeah, that is definitely more likely. Thanks for the clarification.
The parasites that came to CA and ruined it are now headed home to roost.
Lock and load
" Ai gotda vunny veeling dah Reepublucan Potty tinks RINOS are
pure crapola. Chonny, undt Wooty undt ai ghonna ghet jops ass
Val-Mart greetahs, Home Depot paint mixahs, McD's ketchop pumpahs,
undt vaitahs at Ved Lopstah, ven ai loosses mai jop ass govnah."
NOT THE TOP OF THE LIST
“Special Nurse” $350,000+
Municipal railway manager:$325,000+
“Administrative services” department head $280,000+
State college workers salaries:
JEFF TEDFORD UC BERKELEY HEAD COACH-INTERCOLG ATHLETICS $2,831,654
PHILIP E LEBOIT UC SAN FRANCISCO PROF OF CLIN___-MEDCOMP-A $1,979,362
TIMOTHY H MCCALMONT UC SAN FRANCISCO PROF OF CLIN___-MEDCOMP-A $1,945,717
RONALD W BUSUTTIL UC LOS ANGELES PROFESSOR-MEDCOMP-A $1,570,897
RICHARD J SHEMIN UC LOS ANGELES PROFESSOR-MEDCOMP-A $1,195,837
KHALIL M TABSH UC LOS ANGELES HS CLIN PROF-MEDCOMP-A $1,048,891
BEN BRAUN UC BERKELEY HEAD COACH-INTERCOLG ATHLETICS $998,569
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/1669273.html
“Let’s pray that this cancer does not head east.
Already has......”
It CAME from the East. A lot of the twacked-out libs we have here in California are from there. This cancer IS the metastasis.. it’s just that the secondary has become the larger tumor.
Glad you got out in time. 2006 was when I left NJ for similar reasons.
I thought NJ would beat CA to the bankruptcy counter. If not, it will be a close second.
The new Republican governor may buy some time, but NJ cannot sustain the debt it has assumed, especially when our generation of civil servants cash in their sick days and start their pensions.
Our whole country is flirting with third world status with the present financial course we are on.
I think rural areas are closer to the “real economy”, whereas large urban areas tend to have been closer to the bubble, and thus affected more by the crash.
Again?
It's been doomed for years now...Or so I am told...
These articles should be numbered!
"California Is Doomed - Article #723"
Again?
It's been doomed for years now...Or so I am told...
These articles should be numbered!
"California Is Doomed - Article #723"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And that's just this year!
But I still haven’t had anyone explain to me how I “short” california....or detroit, new york, illinois, .....
Medina, Nairobi, and California del Norte. If you don't want that, then cut the whining and get to work.
California isn’t “doomed”; someone else will own it, that’s all.
Maybe they’ll even rename it!
Don’t ever go back. You left at the exact right moment. CA was the envy of the entire world. Truly a golden state.
I predict that congress/Obama will keep giving money to California for as long as they possibly can.
Despite budget cuts and layoff warnings, California still hiring and workforce still growing
http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2094403.html
The Sacramento Bee
Aug. 9, 2009
State job number on upswing despite recession
By George Avalos
California’s state government has managed to add thousands of jobs
during this past year, defying a mammoth budget deficit and a brutal
recession.
The job growth for state workers contrasts with the loss of 759,000
jobs in California’s private industry in the past 12 months:
http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_12984385?nclick_check=1&forced=true
not to mention gubermint employees and their pensions...
Reform advocates are spotlighting those with extravagant pensions
— $100,000 or more — as a way to get the public’s attention and
emphasize that the current system is unsustainable.
http://www.modbee.com/editorials/story/803636.html
Perhaps the real reason why public-sector pension costs have not been tackled is that the full bill has never been revealed to taxpayers.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13988606
From The Economist print edition
July 9, 2009
EDITORIAL
Dodging the bill-The great public-sector pension rip-off
JOIN a private-sector company these days and you will be very lucky if you get a pension linked to your final salary. In Britain almost three out of four companies that retain such schemes have closed them to new employees. The cost of paying such benefits, which are partly linked to inflation and offer payouts to surviving spouses, is simply too high now that many retirees are surviving into their 80s.
Yet most new public-sector employees in Britain and America continue to benefit from pensions linked to their salaries. The pension costs facing the public sector are roughly the same as those facing the private sector; their employees are likely to live just as long. But because of the presumed largesse of future taxpayers, governments seem under much less pressure to reduce their pension costs. In 2005 a reform package in Britain raised the retirement age for new state employees, but still left existing employees able to retire at 60.
Private sector can’t afford public sector employees
The Government Accounting Standards Board
instituted what is known as GASB 45, a reporting system requiring cities, towns, states and other political entities to disclose liabilities associated with other than pension post-employment benefits (OPEB). This should be fully implemented by the end of the
2009 fiscal year.
This increased transparency will disclose an unbelievable $1.5 trillion in just unfunded health care obligations!
And that’s not all. USA Today reports that “The federal government has unfunded obligations of $1.2 trillion to pay for retired health care for retired federal workers ... and Medicare and Social Security obligations pushing the total to more than $5 trillion.”
What happened to the good old days when a billion dollars was a lot of money? Sooner or later taxpayers are going to wake up and things will get nasty.
This taxpayer backlash will not be entirely politically motivated.
Not all Democrats have government jobs. An overwhelming majority of state, local and federal employees are Democrats, who, if legally permitted, belong to public sector unions - a massive voting bloc of 22.5 million, including retirees. The federal government is the
nation’s largest single employer, even excluding the Postal Service.
And state and local governments employ more people than any other
sector of our economy.
It is no mystery the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports 74 percent of budget gaps are in blue states! And Florida is counted as red, which is debatable after Obama’s ascension in 2008. New York has a $13 billion budget deficit, a mere bagatelle compared to California at $42 billion. The similarities between General Motors, New York and California are striking: None can afford its employees.
The moral of this story is: If the private sector were forced to pay these same salaries and benefits, we would have exported all our jobs by now - along with all the companies that provide these jobs.
A good starting point to cure retirement benefit underfunding would be to slowly shrink the size of our governments by taking attrition.
Same here - bailed in '88 and never looked back.
A re-do of the San Fransico earthquake might work to re-set the state.
They’re be massive looting, blacks and hispanics would riot and kill any white or asian person they find; national guard get called in.
A shocked nation might declare martial law and re-set the state back to normal.
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